It’s important that we start off this post with a fact, and that is that… Small Business Owners are some of the busiest people in the entire world. They often wear a gazillion different hats to keep their business afloat. My goal is to focus on one teeny tiny aspect of how to free up some of that time.

Let’s start with a quick story.

Meet Marsha.

Marsha is the sole owner of a small frozen yogurt store that she opened less the five years ago. I recently spoke to Marsha about the different roles she plays in her small business:

• Accounting– She does all the bookkeeping.
• Payroll– Twice a month she runs payroll and pays taxes.
• Human Resources– Unfortunately, her small business has high turnover, meaning she is constantly hiring and managing employee benefits.
• Marketing– She is responsible for keeping customers loyal and bringing in new customers.
• Operations– She is in charge of making sure processes are smooth and inventory is managed.
• Manager– Marsha is often times working as the shift manager and makes sure her employees have direction in the day-to-day efforts.

Now I’m sure there are even more roles that Marsha plays for her business — you can easily observe that she is a very busy person. She told me that often times the role that gets pushed to the side the easiest is marketing. With marketing, you aren’t on as much of a schedule as you are with other roles.

Here is my solution for Marsha, as well as others, who are looking to maintain their marketing while freeing up time: Marketing Automation.

Marketing automation allows you the flexibility to set it and forget it.

We first discussed what type of marketing automation made sense for her business. She said that she typically had a younger crowd and wanted to focus on text messaging. We discussed the CityGro App for iPad, which would allow her grow her text message contacts and automate messaging. Here’s what we did:

Data Collection

• CityGro App for iPad – Asked customers to join her Text Message Birthday Club.
• Automated Text Messages:
• Welcome + Bounce Back – We set it up so that 30 minutes after customer joined they would receive a text welcoming them to the program. It also included a “Bounce Back” offer to come back in the next three days.
• 2 Weeks (NO Visits) – If a customer went two weeks without visiting they would get a text for 25% OFF their purchase.
• 4 Weeks (NO Visits) – If a customer went four weeks without visiting they would get a text for Buy One Get One FREE.
• Birthday Text – The customer would also get a text on their birthday for a free small cone.

Once things were automated for Marsha, she simply had to schedule holiday text campaigns as needed. Thousands of her customers were getting texts at the right time and it was drawing them in. The last thing was to track her results. Once a month she would login to her dashboard to make sure that redemption rates were accurate and that her database was growing.

That is Marsha’s Story. What’s yours? Share your pro tips below! We’d love to hear what your business is doing to automate your marketing. You can also learn about other types of automated marketing by visiting www.citygro.com.